A variational pragmatic analysis of the speech act of complaint focusing on Alexandrian and Najdi Arabic

How do Alexandrians and Najdis Apologize? A Variational Pragmatic Study of Arabic

“…Both groups of participants produced expressions of apology (e.g., I'm sorry) the most, followed by offers of repair, explanations and acknowledgements of responsibility. This similarity comes in stark contrast with earlier VP studies between the two regions which always found significant variations (e.g., El-Dakhs, 2018aEl-Dakhs & Ahmed, 2021). What could explain the unexpected similarity in the present study is the type of speech act under examination.…”

“…The Najdis' use of greetings shows the greater importance they attach to interpersonal relations than Alexandrians who may act more pragmatically and initiate the conversations without several greetings. This result is aligned with earlier comparisons between the two regions (e.g., El-Dakhs, 2021;El-Dakhs & Ahmed, 2021). Additionally, this result shows that the two dialects reflect varied levels of collectivism (Hofstede, 2001) as the Najdis showed more concern about the relationship with the interlocutors than Alexandrians did.…”

“…They also enjoy extensive language contact because a large number of Egyptian expatriates work in Saudi Arabia and a large number of Saudi tourists visit Egypt regularly. Despite this geographic closeness and extensive contact, recent studies have shown pragmatic variation between the two regions in the speech acts of complaints (El-Dakhs & Ahmed, 2021), compliments and compliment responses (El-Dakhs, 2021) and consent to/refusal of requests (El-Dakhs, 2018a). Hence, the current study aims to see if these variations extend to the speech act of apology as well.…”

“…However, the emergence of variational pragmatics (VP), which endorses the examination of intralingual variations in dialects that span within and across nations (e.g., British English, American English, Australian English; French French, Canadian French, Cameroon French) has transformed our perspective to languages and highlighted their pluricentric nature. Thus, VP has attracted the attention of several scholars from around the world (e.g., Barron, 2017Barron, , 2022El-Dakhs & Ahmed, 2021;Farenkia, 2011;Lochtman, 2022;Ren, 2015;Su & Chang, 2019;Yang & Deng, 2020;Yujie, 2021).…”

Translation Quality of Arabic Directive Speech Acts in Pandemic’s Book: An Attempt to Delve into Covid-19

“…Studies on directive speech acts in Arabic, Taiwanese and Indonesian have been conducted by previous researchers, such as: Chang & Iûnn (2021), el-Dakhs & Ahmed (2021, Haddad (2022), Prayitno et al, (2021), Rahmawati et al, (2016), & Salama (2021). However, the existing studies have not discussed directive speech acts in detail, especially in pandemic texts and the relationship between directive speech acts and the technique and quality of translation.…”